A printing apparatus is to print out based on a print job received from an information terminal such as a personal computer (PC: Personal Computer), and shared between a plurality of information terminals. Therefore, recording paper printed out for each user is mixed on a paper discharge tray of the printing apparatus.
Further, for conference materials, a plurality of files created on a PC for each category of materials such as a document file, a spreadsheet file and a drawing file are printed out on recording paper, and the recording paper is combined to be one material. Therefore, when a user uses a multi-functional peripheral shared with other users to print all conference materials, there is a problem that, in the case of consecutively inputting a plurality of files to the multi-functional peripheral, to which a print instruction is however coincidentally given from other user, a record instructed to be output by the other user is mixed among the conference materials.
Additionally, it is also considered that a plurality of files for conference materials are once combined into one file on a PC before printing, however, such a plurality of files differ in types (xls, doc, ppt and dxf), which makes a user cumbersome to combine into one file.
With a technique disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 11-119940, in printing of a plurality of document files, a group ID, a print order ID and the like are specified to a header of a print job on a PC side to print in order of the print order ID for each group ID on a printing apparatus side, so that it is possible to group the plurality of document files for printing. Therefore, there goes a defect such that printing is performed with a print job from other user mixed in execution of printing.
Further, with a technique disclosed in Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2001-075768, a user is able to specify a group name and a print order of a print job in a client computer, and by a print server, a plurality of print jobs that are transmitted from the client computer are distinguished between a print job with a specified print order and a print job without the specified print order, then the print jobs are respectively rearranged and arrayed in a specified print order to be transmitted to a printing apparatus. This makes it possible to transmit a plurality of a sequence of print jobs in the order specified to the same printing apparatus in a lump for continuous printing.
Additionally, there is a technique that a printing apparatus stores a plurality of print jobs received from a PC, and a user operates an operation portion such as a touch panel of the printing apparatus to instruct a processing order of the print jobs which are stored.
However, with methods disclosed in the Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 11-119940 and Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication No. 2001-075768 described above, operation required to be performed by a user is cumbersome.